Despite the fact that this was filtered through HN seeing a stock picture of a key and then skimming quickly and seeing even more stock pictures turned me off from reading the article. I thought it'd be interesting to point out.
So Q. Is the problem that the images are stock images? Or is the issue that there are images?
Wouldn't just a bunch of text and no images make it much harder to get through the content?
Not arguing one way or the other, just curious on thoughts on this.
Other examples of long blocks of text which people read include books, articles on http://alistapart.com (okay they have one but it is classy and fits with the site), and long comment threads on hacker news.
Just like there is an art to writing, there is also an art to choosing the correct imagery to accompany the text. Besides the poor technical quality, many of the images in the article are using visual cliches. Together, these problems subconsciously guide the reader into expecting a similarly low quality from the text.
I'd suggest combing through the Creative Commons images on something like http://compfight.com/ for things that are a bit more unusual and visually interesting.
It's also worth pointing out that if you just can't find any good images to accompany your article, it may be better to just let the text speak for itself.